Gilded
by Duesal Bladesinger
Summary: With loving parents and plenty of friends, unease is the last thing that Naruto should be feeling. But it lingers in the back of his mind, clouding his sight with suspicion and paranoia. Why do his dreams feel so real? Why does he remember things that never were? [COMPLETE]
1. Shukaku

**Summary : **With loving parents and plenty of friends, unease is the last thing that Naruto should be feeling. But it lingers in the back of his mind, clouding his sight with suspicion and paranoia. Why do his dreams feel so real? Why does he remember things that never were?

 **Disclaimer :** The Naruto franchise is owned by Masashi Kishimoto, Shueisha, Studio Pierrot, TV Tokyo, and Viz collectively. Please support the official release.

 **Gilded**

Chapter 1

Shukaku

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 _People live their lives bound by what they accept as correct and true. That's how they define "reality". But what does it mean to be "correct" or "true"? Merely vague concepts . . . Their "reality" may all be a mirage. Can we consider them to simply be living in their own world, shaped by their beliefs?_ — Itachi Uchiha

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"Naruto~!"

The sheets were sinfully soft as they cocooned him, sheltering him from the outside world. It was like sleeping in a giant bowl of ramen, with the broth warming him up and the noodles cushioning his body. Somehow, the thought wormed its way into his dream, and Naruto believed with all his heart that he actually was sleeping in his favorite food.

It just couldn't get any better than this. It didn't even matter that someone somewhere in RamenLand wouldn't stop calling his name. Naruto wasn't about to answer, though. They could go find their own ramen.

" _Naruto!_ " The annoying voice that kept calling him was slightly strained now, increasing in volume and pitch.

Naturally, it went ignored.

"Mmmm . . . Miso . . ." The boy sprawled haphazardly in the ramen-broth pool, licking his lips at the thought of his favorite flavor. The way it coated his tongue, the tang against his taste buds, the satisfying slurp.

His door slammed open with an almighty kick.

To say that Naruto jumped out of bed wouldn't even come close. An impala couldn't have topped what he did in his moment of panic, as he ended up on the ceiling in the far corner like some crazed bat.

Kushina looked on with a satisfied gleam in her eyes. "Oh, look at that. You're already awake! Silly me." She chuckled to herself as her son glared daggers at her, his chest heaving and his eyes wide in absolute panic.

With a flip of her long, red hair, she turned and exited the room, not even bothering with the door she'd kicked open.

"Breakfast is ready," she called over her shoulder. "Come down and eat while it's still hot."

Grumbling obscenities under his breath, Naruto dropped down from the ceiling and began stumbling towards the stairs before skidding to a stop at his mother's sudden shout.

"And don't you _dare_ come downstairs without brushing your teeth!" It wasn't a warning so much as it was a death-threat.

Naruto blanched and immediately changed course, heading straight for his bathroom.

Several minutes later, teeth brushed and face scrubbed clean (just in case his mom told him to do that too), he plopped down in his usual seat at the breakfast table.

"'Morning," he moaned in greeting, looking for all the world like a walking corpse.

Minato barely even looked up from his newspaper and coffee, snorting, "What'd she do this time?"

"Kicked my door open," was the muttered response. "Scared the _crap_ out of me."

"That's it?" Minato remarked, turning the page as his eyes took apart the crossword puzzles on the fly. "That's pretty tame for your mother."

"Not tame enough if you ask me . . ."

Minato scoffed at his sixteen-year-old's complaining before returning to his newspaper's puzzles.

 _I really wish they wouldn't make these so easy. I mean, third fire-shadow, eight letters? Come on!_

Naruto was too busy despairing over the loss of his sleep to notice his dad's frustration with whoever was making the crossword puzzles. His head was placed firmly between his arms, only lifting as a heavenly scent lazily drifted in through the kitchen entrance.

Kushina waltzed into the dining room, her hands laden with pancakes and strawberries. "And how are my two lovely men this fine, wonderful morning?" Her answer was a dazed groan and an absent-minded 'good, good'.

She set the food down in the middle of the table, not quite able to hide her smile at the way her husband and son were suddenly drooling over her cooking.

At an unspoken signal, they both pounced on their breakfast, letting out identical whimpers of satisfaction at the rich, delectable fluffiness of the pancakes and the cool sweetness of the maple syrup.

"So," Kushina began, "what are the two of you planning for today?" She proceeded to take a bite of her own as she waited for an answer. She couldn't help but close her eyes and moan at the taste.

Naruto drowned his mouthful of food with some of the orange juice already at the table before answering. "I'm supposed to meet Sakura-chan at the hospital so we can go visit Kakashi-sensei."

Minato sighed at that and picked up his newspaper again, turning to the sports section. "That man never did know how to hold back in a mission. On his first D-rank, he tried to use _kunai_ to herd a runaway cat. Can you believe it?"

Kushina burst out laughing, but Naruto paled, knowing _exactly_ why Kakashi-sensei would have used those kunai. He had his suspicions that Kakashi-sensei wasn't 'herding' that cat at all.

"Tora was _alive_ back then?!"

Minato merely flipped another page, stopping to read a report on Konoha's budding banking system. "I believe so," he remarked absently.

"But that was ten years ago!" Naruto exclaimed, eyes wide with disbelief.

"So?" Kushina interjected, spearing a strawberry with a fork before popping it into her mouth and speaking between chews. "Maybe he's just a really healthy cat."

Now Naruto was just embarrassed. He and the rest of Team Seven had been shown up _repeatedly_ by a cat that was supposed to be on its last legs.

Shaking the thought out of his head, he wolfed down the rest of his pancakes, chugged his glass of orange juice (freshly squeezed, because his mom wouldn't settle for anything less), popped a few strawberries into his mouth, then headed out the door.

"I'm heading out," he called over his shoulder.

 _"I just wish . . . that someone would be there to tell me 'work hard at school' and 'have a nice day'. I hate being alone, Iruka-sensei."_

 _"I know exactly what you mean, Naruto. It's tough."_

Naruto stood shock-still at the doorway.

"Have a nice day!" Kushina said, jarring him from his stillness. "And tell Sakura-chan and Kakashi we say hi!"

He breathed in long and deep, a chill running down his spine.

 _Who's Iruka-sensei?_

Kushina tilted her head with a small confused frown as she looked on from her seat at the table. "What are you standing there for? You're going to be late, and you know Sakura-chan hates it when you keep her waiting."

Naruto's eyes widened before he sprinted out the door. It was probably nothing anyway.


	2. Matatabi

**Summary : **With loving parents and plenty of friends, unease is the last thing that Naruto should be feeling. But it lingers in the back of his mind, clouding his sight with suspicion and paranoia. Why do his dreams feel so real? Why does he remember things that never were?

 **Gilded**

Chapter 2

Matatabi

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Naruto didn't always like hospitals. He hated the way people were always coughing and how they needed needles and tubes pumping them full of who knows what just to wake up every day. He hated the constant smell of bleach, and the god-awful sludge the hospital had the nerve to call food.

And what kind of horrible place wouldn't let their patients eat takeout ramen?

But then against every survival instinct he had, Naruto found himself going back every day, all to see a girl with pink hair and bright green eyes.

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When Naruto walked in, he was greeted with the sight of Kakashi sitting on a bed, wincing as Sakura gingerly examined a bruised and probably broken arm. She set it down with a sigh, closing her eyes in exasperation. "Sensei, why aren't you more careful? One of these days you're going to seriously injure yourself."

Kakashi rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment with his other hand, ruffling his rebellious silver hair while offering a weak chuckle. "Well, I guess this is just how the mission turned out." He looked up, finally noticing Naruto step into the room. "Ah, Naruto!" he said, eye curving up in a smile, "I was wondering when you'd come to visit."

Naruto grinned as he moved to take his place next to Sakura by Kakashi's bedside. "Sorry, sensei. Mom wanted me to go grocery shopping for her. She says she'll send some cooking over for you as soon as she's done."

Kakashi's eye-smile brightened with glee. "Oh? Kushina-nee's cooking? I should get injured more often!"

Naruto snorted in amusement, but Sakura just palmed her face with a groan. "Don't joke like that, sensei. You're getting injured too often as it is."

Kakashi's expression shifted to a slightly more sheepish one before he raised his hands up in surrender. "Alright, alright, you win. I'll be more careful." Then he lowered his arms and both his tone and expression became more serious. "Have either of you two seen Sasuke? I haven't heard from him for weeks now."

Sakura pursed her lips, looking more worried than Naruto was used to seeing. "So far I haven't heard anything. Mikoto-sama says that Sasuke-kun and Itachi-san are on an extended mission together, but she won't say anything further."

As one, Sakura and Kakashi both turned to Naruto.

Naruto blinked owlishly. "What?"

Sakura scowled. "What do you mean, 'what'? You're the Hokage's son! There's no way you haven't heard anything!"

"So?!" Naruto whined. "Kakashi-sensei's dad's disciple and _he_ hasn't heard anything, either!"

Sakura glanced at her sensei who merely shrugged. "He's got a point, you know. If Minato-sensei needs to keep a secret, even Kushina-nee couldn't make him give it up."

The girl sighed, her head and shoulders drooping. "So basically, Sasuke-kun's been gone for two weeks with Itachi, Naruto's dad isn't talking, Sasuke-kun's parents aren't talking, and we have no other leads?"

Kakashi thought about that for a moment before nodding. "Sounds about right."

Naruto gestured dismissively, "Eh, the bastard'll be fine. He's like a cockroach—too damn stubborn to die."

Sakura's lips quirked up in a small smile. "You're mean, Naruto," she said, her face relaxing and her voice bubbling with laughter.

Naruto didn't say anything else: he just watched with fondness in his eyes. He would do anything, say anything, just to see her smile and hear her laugh.

He was distracted by a sudden motion in the corner of his vision. When he looked over, he noticed his sensei thumbing through a book with what seemed to be quite a bit of interest. Naruto smirked a bit. "Enjoying your porn, sensei?" he asked.

Sakura gaped and turned red while Kakashi just blinked in confusion. "Wha— _Kakashi-sensei!_ "

Kakashi simply sighed before presenting his reading material for inspection. "Relax, Sakura, I'm not reading porn. This is the third book in a fantasy series that I started a few weeks ago." After she'd grabbed the novel and read the summary as well as randomly skimmed through it and determined that no, Kakashi-sensei was _not_ reading porn, Sakura had the grace to look contrite, but Naruto was simply dumbfounded. "Although I don't know why Naruto would think that _I'd_ be reading porn."

Naruto was suddenly put in the awkward situation of someone who'd made a false accusation. "Bu-But—you _always_ read porn!"

Kakashi sighed, recognizing Uzumaki stubbornness for what it was. "Naruto, it's one thing to accuse me of something like that as a small joke. It's another to continue to insist that it's true."

Naruto was about to say something in his defense (like when and _why_ did Kakashi-sensei abandon his Icha Icha) but was cut short by Sakura's stern glare. "Naruto, you can't just go around accusing people of things like that! You could seriously damage their good reputations!"

Naruto had almost forgotten, but being scolded by Sakura-chan, being scolded for _real_ , it kinda made his chest ache a bit. He abruptly swayed and nearly fell over, barely saving himself by grabbing onto the railing of Kakashi's bed and hauling himself back upright.

Kakashi and Sakura looked over with identical expressions of worry. "Are you okay, Naruto?" Kakashi asked.

Naruto tried to dismiss their concerns with a flimsy grin. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just fell asleep for a second there."

Sakura frowned, obviously not buying the excuse, and reached out to touch his forehead. Naruto went unnaturally still at the contact, but Sakura didn't seem to notice as she hummed for a moment before withdrawing her hand. "Well, there's no fever. Have you been sleeping enough?" Saying so, she leaned in close to his face, using her fingers to keep his eyes wide open as she examined them.

Naruto was quick to slip away from his teammate's intrusive grasp. "Sure I have! Honest, Sakura-chan!"

"Are you sure, Naruto? We're already in the hospital, so it's just a matter of finding another room to do some proper tests, and—"

Naruto stood so suddenly that Sakura actually flinched away from him. "Sorry, guys, I just remembered that mom wanted me to go get groceries for tonight's dinner. I'll see you later!"

"Naruto, wait! You—" Before Sakura could even finish her sentence, her teammate had vanished through the door.

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Naruto wandered through the market with a frown. It was a stupid thing to be mad about. It really was. Who in their right mind would be upset that their sensei wasn't a porn addict? It was weird! But he was still beset by the feeling, the _instinct_ , that something wasn't quite right.

He stopped in front of a seafood vendor just long enough to purchase a tube of fishcake for ramen before moving on to the other stands.

Like, it wasn't as if he wasn't happy—there was no reason for him _not_ to be—but still. He couldn't really explain his uneasiness all that well.

Naruto looked up as an old granny smiled at him and told him that she'd be more than willing to give the Hokage's son a discount on her vegetables. He smiled and thanked her before buying a few radishes, a cabbage, and half a dozen sweet potatoes.

Groceries purchased, Naruto was left with nothing but his thoughts as he made his way home. About halfway there, he stopped, sighed, and hung his head with shame. He was probably just being silly and immature about this whole thing. He'd have to apologize to Kakashi-sensei the next time he saw him.


	3. Isobu

**Summary : **With loving parents and plenty of friends, unease is the last thing that Naruto should be feeling. But it lingers in the back of his mind, clouding his sight with suspicion and paranoia. Why do his dreams feel so real? Why does he remember things that never were?

 **Gilded**

Chapter 3

Isobu

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 _"How could you who've never even_ had _a family presume to understand what it is that I've lost, huh? How fucking arrogant can you get?"_

Naruto stiffened as the voice echoed in his head, the hair on the back of his neck rising to attention at the venomous snarl of its tone. Cautiously, he glanced around his empty bedroom, eyes uneasily peering into the shadows cast by the streetlamp from outside.

"What the hell?" he muttered, now thoroughly creeped out.

There was no answer. Shuffling in his bed, Naruto cast one last wary glance over his shoulder before burying himself in his sheets once more, swiftly convincing himself that he'd just imagined hearing the voice. Within a few minutes, his breathing evened out and his consciousness drifted away.

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"Hey, dad," Naruto said between mouthfuls of chocolate chip pancakes, "can I ask you something?"

The Yondaime paused and glanced up from another of his many puzzles, his expression intrigued. "Sure, Naruto. What is it?"

"When's Sasuke supposed to come back?" he asked, reaching for the pitcher of orange juice,

From across the kitchen table, Kushina blinked, then cooed. "Aww, missing your best friend already?"

Naruto scowled in response, his posture becoming slightly more defensive. "You don't have to make it sound like _that_ , mom."

Kushina teeth flashed as she grinned mischievously at her son, mocking challenge all over her face. "What? A mother's allowed to tease her child!"

Naruto rolled his eyes at her antics before turning back to his father. "Well?"

Minato took a moment to take a bite out of his pancakes after dabbing them with syrup before remarking, "Can't tell you. National security, son."

Naruto's face fell. "What?! Come on! The bastard can't be doing anything _that_ important!"

" _Language_ , Naruto," Kushina scolded, before frowning thoughtfully. "Haven't you and Sasuke been arguing lately? I thought you'd like the time spent away from each other."

Naruto shifted in his seat, feeling the uncomfortable weight of both of his parents' calculating gazes. "Well, we might not always get along, and some of the things he says might be _completely_ _insane_ ," here he made sure his expression was completely earnest so his parents wouldn't think that he was exaggerating, not that he'd ever have to when concerning Sasuke, "but that doesn't mean that he isn't my best friend. Besides, it's getting kinda boring without him being a total jerk all the time."

Minato chewed for a moment before drowning his mouthful of food with a large gulp of orange juice. "As touching as that is, I still can't tell you anything," he finally said.

Naruto knew his dad had made up his mind when he started up with his crossword puzzles again. "You stink, dad," Naruto groused, sinking a bit in his seat.

Minato merely looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "Such a grateful son," he remarked dryly, causing Naruto and Kushina to snicker.

As he ate, Naruto completely missed the way his parents were looking at each other. Eventually, Minato winced and nodded, and Kushina smiled brightly and went back to her pancakes.

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"Hey, Sakura-chan!" Naruto greeted with his usual enthusiasm.

"Oh? Hi, Naruto." Naruto wilted a bit when his teammate only glanced up for a moment before focussing again on Kakashi's arm, her hands coated with the healing green chakra of a medic-nin.

Kakashi glanced at his student with a deadpan on his face. "Hello there, Naruto. I suppose I have to be a pretty girl to be greeted by you as well?"

Naruto suddenly dissolved into a coughing fit, his cheeks completely red and his eyes wide with panic. Sakura, who hadn't really been paying attention to their exchange, looked up again and frowned at the repeated hacking. "Those coughs sound pretty nasty. Are you feeling okay, Naruto?"

"He's definitely feeling _something_ ," Kakashi snarked, grinning cheekily at Naruto's suddenly much louder coughs.

"What was that?" Sakura asked, briefly glancing in her sensei's direction before shaking her head. "Whatever. Here, sit down, Naruto," Sakura ordered, gesturing to the chair by Kakashi's bedside. "I'll go get you a glass of water."

As a still-coughing Naruto reluctantly sat down, Sakura quickly exited the room. Naruto immediately glared at his sensei. "You're evil, you know that?" he hissed.

Kakashi shrugged indifferently. "That's a subjective term. What you call 'evil' some might call 'funny'." The man finished with a mocking wink that made Naruto twitch against a barely repressed urge for violence.

"Ah, Naruto, I've been meaning to ask you something." They both looked back at Sakura as she walked into the room, a plastic cup full of water in her hand. She made her way over to Naruto and handed him the cup, waiting for him to finish its contents before continuing her inquiry. "Are you doing alright? Yesterday you seemed sort of, I don't know, distracted? Confused?"

Naruto hesitated a bit before a grin that was a bit too cheerful plastered itself on his face. "Yeah, I was fine! I just remembered that my mom needed me to finish grocery shopping, and if I forgot about it she'd cave my face in." He laughed, and his teammates only winced in sympathy, knowing the exaggeration was only slight.

"By the way," Naruto ventured, his expression more than a little sheepish, "sorry about yesterday, Kakashi-sensei."

Sakura and Kakashi blinked and glanced significantly at each other before the girl gasped dramatically. "Kakashi-sensei, did Naruto just _apologize_ for something he did?"

Naruto looked incredulously from his smirking teammate to his sensei, then back again. "Huh?" he said intelligently.

"I'm impressed too, Sakura," Kakashi confided, his single eye full of mirth. "I never thought he'd be able to do it."

"Gee, thanks," Naruto said, his face settling in the deadpan he'd picked up after years of watching his father go through piles and piles of paperwork. "It was really difficult. I had to take courses and everything. You guys should be proud."

Sakura and Kakashi took one look at him and at the expression on his face before they burst out laughing, and after a moment Naruto joined them. His team had a dynamic that just seemed to click, and he wouldn't give it up for anything in the world. With them, Naruto felt like he belonged.


	4. Son Goku

**Summary : **With loving parents and plenty of friends, unease is the last thing that Naruto should be feeling. But it lingers in the back of his mind, clouding his sight with suspicion and paranoia. Why do his dreams feel so real? Why does he remember things that never were?

 **Gilded**

Chapter 4

Son Goku

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Naruto opened the door and blinked at the tall, robust frame of the man standing in front of him before his face broke out in a wide grin. "Ero-sennin! You're back!" he crowed, tackling the Toad Sage in his own version of a hug.

Jiraiya scowled grouchily, prying his godson off of himself. "I told you not to call me that, brat!" he snapped.

Naruto merely laughed, ducking under the older man's swipe. "Mom! Dad! Ero-sennin's back!" he called.

Before Naruto could dart back into the house, Minato appeared right next to the front door without warning, causing both Naruto and Jiraiya to flinch away.

"Gah! Dad, what the hell!" Naruto shouted, his hand clutched over his heart.

Jiraiya on the other hand merely rolled his eyes. "You've gotten lazy, Minato. Too good for walking now?"

"Apparently!" Kushina answered from somewhere further in the house. "It's been _weeks_ since he last used a door!"

Jiraiya snorted and Minato chuckled, the skin around his eyes crinkling with mirth. "It's good to see you, too, sensei."

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After dinner, they gathered in the family room as Jiraiya regaled them with tales of his travels.

"You wouldn't _believe_ the women of the land of Waterfalls. They've got unbelievable," here he made a lewd gesture that would have had a much better reception had Kushina not been glaring frostily at them. Naruto and Minato glanced nervously at each other before discreetly backing their chairs up away from the imminent eruption that was Kushina.

"Keep going. I'd _love_ to hear more, ya know." Her expression became dangerously blank, and her eyes took on a nerve-wrecking glint.

Jiraiya abruptly paled, as though finally realizing who he'd been talking to. "A-Ah, no, there's not much to tell."

Kushina smiled, and Jiraiya almost peed himself. "Oh, don't be shy, Jiraiya. Please continue your story."

Jiraiya looked pleadingly to Minato, only to realize that the man and his son had both somehow ended up at the very edge of the room, right by the doorway.

Those traitors.

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 _"Hey, Tsunade-baachan. Now that I've become a sage, I can sense people's chakra signatures."_

 _" . . ."_

 _"Is Kakashi-sensei out on a mission?"_

 _" . . ."_

 _"I see."_

Without warning Naruto collapsed bonelessly onto the bleached tiles of the hospital room. Sakura and Kakashi both shouted in shock and rushed to his prone form, Kakashi completely disregarding his bedrest orders to do so.

"Naruto!"

"Naruto?! Can you hear me?!" Sakura rolled Naruto onto his stomach to ensure that he would merely drool instead of choking on his own saliva. She then forced open his eyelids, looking closely for any abnormalities in his pupils. After several tense minutes of poking and prodding, she leaned back with a sigh. "It doesn't look like he had a stroke or anything," she told Kakashi, "but I have no idea what made him just _pass out_ like this."

Kakashi looked down at his slumbering student, worry and fear worming their way into his heart. "But Naruto will be fine, right?"

Sakura looked at him with one of the most frustrated expressions he'd ever seen from her. "That's the thing: _I don't know._ Whatever made Naruto just lose consciousness like that could be life-threatening, so we need to figure out whatever the hell it is so we can fix it."

Kakashi nodded in resignation. He'd trusted Sakura to make the medical decisions that were in the team's best interest for several years now. If Sakura thought that there was cause for concern, then they'd damn well listen to her. "So does that mean that he'll need to stay in the hospital while you run those tests?"

"That's right. Help me get him up to your bed, sensei."

"Where am _I_ going to sleep?" Kakashi joked, hooking a hand underneath Naruto's arm.

"In your house, you freeloader," Sakura shot back before grabbing Naruto's other arm and hauling him off the ground.

Kakashi paused in confusion. "Wait, I'm healed?" He glanced back at his previously injured arm. He hadn't noticed before with the fiasco of Naruto falling unconscious, but there was no pain coming from his injury anymore. He tightened a few muscles experimentally, mentally bracing himself for the pain, but it never came. "Huh," Kakashi said. "Well that's good, at least."

After they'd hauled Naruto into Kakashi's old bed, Kakashi went to find his student's parents while Sakura began coordinating various diagnostic tests.

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When Naruto woke up, the first thing he realized was that he wasn't in his room. The second thing that he realized was that his head was _killing_ him. And the third thing that he realized was that as soon as he started to move, lots of voices started talking all at once. Scowling, he blinked away the sleep from his eyes and his vision came into focus.

A pale hand reach up and brushed his forehead. Naruto followed it with his eyes to the pink-haired person it was attached to. Sakura-chan? What was she doing here? Another hand reached and cupped his face, and Naruto founded himself staring into his mother's eyes. Mom, too? What the hell was going on?

Slowly, the disorienting jumble of voices began sorting themselves into words.

"Tes—ven't—"

"But—out the—"

"That isn't wor—"

Naruto shook his head. Nothing was making any sense. He stilled when he felt cool hands resting on his temples. Kushina looked into his eyes, and her mouth moved as she said something, but he couldn't understand her. Naruto shook his head and her eyes grew hard, and he felt something strange coming from her hands for the briefest amount of time. It was freezing cold and felt utterly alien, and he would have flinched away from his mother's touch had it not been so fast.

Slowly, Kushina withdrew her hands, staring at him intently. This time when she spoke, he could understand.

"Naruto?" she said, her concern clear in the tenseness of her voice. "Naruto? Can you hear me?"

Naruto opened his mouth to speak and all of a sudden realized how dry it was. He tried to swallow before giving up and rasping out, "Yeah. I can hear you, mom."

With that, everyone in the room seemed to sag with relief. Suddenly, Naruto noticed that his mom and Sakura weren't the only ones in the room with him. Standing further back, his dad, Kakashi-sensei, and even Ero-sennin were all in there with him.

Something warm settled in his chest. "Hey guys," Naruto said, grinning so wide it was starting to hurt. "How's it going?"

"Idiot," Sakura said fondly, the tenderness of her voice making his face feel hot. Everyone else just laughed.


	5. Kokuo

**Summary : **With loving parents and plenty of friends, unease is the last thing that Naruto should be feeling. But it lingers in the back of his mind, clouding his sight with suspicion and paranoia. Why do his dreams feel so real? Why does he remember things that never were?

 **Gilded**

Chapter 5

Kokuo

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"Hey, mom?"

Kushina looked up from where she'd been inspecting Naruto's pitiful excuse for a meal that had been provided by the hospital's culinary staff, mere moments away from going down to the kitchen to give them a piece of her mind. "Need something, Naruto?"

The teenager fidgeted in his hospital bed. "Can I . . . talk to you about something?" he asked, his stomach in knots and his shoulders tight.

Kushina frowned, and Naruto quailed under her scrutiny. She marched over to his bed and took a seat next to him, staring directly into his eyes. "Alright, spill it, squirt. What's eating you?"

Naruto hesitated for a moment before sighing and looking down at the bleached-white cotton sheets covering his legs. "I think I'm going crazy, mom," he softly confessed.

When silence met his statement, Naruto looked up into his mother's eyes and found no disgust or reproach, only concern. He shook off the shackles of his nervousness and continued. "I keep on hearing these, these _things_. They're like voices or something, like they're right in front of me." His voice grew shaky towards the end and he faltered. He didn't know why he was feeling emotional, but for whatever reason the voices carried so much _pain_.

Kushina stared at him for a minute, and Naruto began to wonder what she was thinking. Eventually, she leaned down and pressed a small kiss on his brow.

"Go to sleep, Naruto," she said.

He tried to rise. "But Mom, I—"

She gently held him down with a hand to the center of his chest. "Sleep," she commanded. "Don't worry about the voices anymore. Mom'll take care of it for you."

Naruto frowned, but didn't try to get up again. "How're you gonna do _that?_ "

Kushina just smiled in a way that Naruto could only describe as mysterious. "Don't ya know? Moms are special like that!"

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The next day after he'd been deemed well enough to leave the hospital, Naruto was taken straight home where he was ambushed by his dad, Sakura-chan, Kakashi-sensei, and Ero-sennin who'd apparently stuck around through all the drama. Even Tsunade-baachan had found it in herself to show up.

They greeted him with snacks and laughter, pulling him almost immediately into their fun.

From further back, Kushina met Minato's gaze with her own for the briefest of moments. At an unspoken message, he nodded, and then it was as though the exchange had never taken place.

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A few days later, Naruto was waiting for Sakura and Kakashi on the bridge they usually gathered at before team activities. He casually leaned over the edge and stared into the flowing river water, watching as the occasional fish swam by. Given how boisterous and hyperactive he was, standing still for this long really shouldn't have felt natural to him—quite the opposite, really—but for some weird reason it just felt _right_.

Naruto didn't have time to dwell on the thought, looking up when he saw a flash of silver in the corner of his vision. "Kakashi-sensei!" he called. "You beat Sakura-chan!"

Kakashi nodded with a slightly bored expression, his impossible hair somehow remaining in place with the motion. "It always pays to be early, Naruto."

Something about the phrase didn't sound right, but Naruto couldn't put his finger on what it was. In the end he discarded the concern, deeming it unimportant.

"So, where's Sakura?" Kakashi asked, leaning against the bridge railing as he tilted his head back to stare at the cloudless blue sky.

"Sakura-chan? She's probably still at the hospital. Tsunade-baachan must've put her on extra rounds or something." In the river, a koy fish bobbed to the surface and started a staring contest with Naruto.

Kakashi whistled softly and shook his head with more than a little wonder. "How you get away with calling Tsunade-sama that I'll never understand."

Naruto turned and grinned cheekily at him. "It's 'cause she likes me more!" He looked back to the fish in the river, only to scowl when he discovered it had vanished.

Kakashi deadpanned. "Oh, I'm sure. She must _love_ the hyperactive motormouth calling her old."

"But she _is_ old!"

Naruto's face held such honest sincerity that Kakashi smacked a his palm to his forehead. "You've got the devil's luck to have even _survived_ this long, Naruto. There's no other explanation."

As Naruto was in the middle of trying to decide whether or not to protest that point, Kakashi was distracted by something over Naruto's shoulder. He raised his hand in greeting. "Yo, Sakura!"

'Naruto twisted his torso as he glanced behind him, his face already splitting in a wide grin. "Hi, Sakura-chan!"

"Hey, Naruto! Kakashi-sensei!" Sakura called back, smiling as she approached, and Naruto once again felt his heart race at the gentle curve of her lips.

"So," she said, coming to a stop next to them, "what's the plan for today?"

"Well, you see," Kakashi began enthusiastically, "The daimyo's wife's cat escaped again, so we've all been ordered to track it down."

The blood drained from Naruto and Sakura's faces. "We're not genin anymore, sensei!" Sakura loudly protested.

"Yeah!" Naruto hastily agreed. "The younger shinobi should be forced to go through that hell!"

Kakashi looked from one student to the next with as deadly serious an expression as they'd ever seen, before his only visible eye curved in his version of a smile. "Just kidding!"

Naruto and Sakura stared in disbelief, quickly followed by relief. "Don't scare us like that, sensei!" Sakura complained.

"You stink," Naruto groused. "You have _no idea_ how much I hate that cat."

Kakashi's laughed like the wind whispering through the forest. "Trust me, Naruto, I know _exactly_ how much you hate that cat."

Naruto looked at his teacher with horror dawning on his face. "You mean Tōra really _was_ alive for that long?!" he practically shrieked.

Sakura looked at them both in confusion. "Wait, what's this about Tōra living long?"

Her teammate whirled around to face her and she flinched away from the wild look in his eyes. "Tōra's immortal!"

"What?!" Sakura exclaimed, looking to their sensei for clarification. "Kakashi-sensei, what's Naruto talking about?"

Kakashi scratched the back of his head. "Well, you see, when I was a genin on Minato-sensei's team I also had to go catch Tōra." Then he leaned in close and whispered, "And before that, Minato-sensei had to catch Tōra as a genin as well."

As Naruto went even more pale, Sakura's green eyes narrowed and her eyebrows pinched together before her face went slack with shock. "But, that would mean that—"

The silver-haired jōnin nodded, his expression oddly solemn for once. "That cat's been escaping for more than twenty-seven years."

"Holy crap," Sakura breathed. "That cat really _is_ immortal."

"I _told_ you!" Naruto cried. "It's not natural!"

"It _is_ rather unusual," Kakashi mused. "I'll talk to Minato-sensei about it later. Maybe we can examine the cat the next time it gets loose and determine why it's so active in it's old age."

"It's because it's a demon!" Naruto hissed, unwilling to drop the subject. "There's no way that _thing_ is a regular cat!"

Sakura and Kakashi took one look at the haunted expression on Naruto's face before they burst out laughing.


	6. Saiken

**Summary : **With loving parents and plenty of friends, unease is the last thing that Naruto should be feeling. But it lingers in the back of his mind, clouding his sight with suspicion and paranoia. Why do his dreams feel so real? Why does he remember things that never were?

 **Gilded**

Chapter 6

Saiken

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Somewhere far, far away from the Village Hidden in the Leaves, a man lay prone on the ground, his body littered with wounds and burns, and his clothes torn to ribbons. With a superhuman effort he lifted his head off the ground to stare at the back of a figure that was steadily walking away, reaching for him with a desperation that went beyond reason.

He tried to say something, _anything_ to make him stop, make him _come back_ , but his voice failed and he went completely limp as the last of his energy left him, and his head fell to the ground with a dull thud.

As he suffocated on smoke and scorched air, the forest around him crackled and burned in flames of the purest black.

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Naruto flinched as he felt something cold on the back of his neck. He shivered and rubbed his arms. "Weird," he muttered.

Sakura glanced over from where she'd been walking next to him. "Something wrong?"

He grinned easily, reassuring her. "Nah, I'm fine. Just felt really cold all of a sudden. It's gone now."

Sakura tilted her head with a small frown but didn't press him, simply nodding as they continued walking on their way to the Hokage tower for a mission from Naruto's dad. The sky was a clear blue and a laughing breeze drifted through the streets, carrying with it the buzzing conversations of Konoha proper. The morning sun steadily rose to the top of the sky, warming the earth as it shone down.

Kakashi met them at the door with a one-eyed smile and a lazy salute before leading them upstairs to the Hokage's office.

"Hey, dad!" Naruto greeted, his voice full of the enthusiasm he always had right before a mission.

Minato looked up from a truly monstrous pile of paperwork, two of his clones off to the side reorganizing the filing system in one of the drawers. "Son," he acknowledged. Turning to Kakashi, he continued, "You can pick between a C-rank escort mission to the Land of Rivers, or," he paused as he riffled through a few documents, "a bunch of D-ranks."

Kakashi glanced briefly at his subordinates.

"The C-rank," Sakura voted almost immediately.

"There's no way I'm ever painting a fence again!" Naruto declared, shuddering at the thought of the mind-numbingly boring task.

Kakashi turned back to Minato with a wry smile. "Well, Team Seven has spoken! We'll take that escort mission."

"Very well," Minato said, swiftly signing the necessary documents before sliding Kakashi a few of his own to look through. "There are the details, nothing too difficult as far as I've gathered."

Kakashi peered at the tiny writing, bringing it extra close to his face for inspection. "A noblewomen, huh? What does she need an escort for?"

"She's in line to inherit a large castle and the surrounding area, but her younger brother took it from her by force. She's going to appeal to the Great Lord of the region and needs someone to make sure her brother doesn't try anything dirty while she's on the way."

Someone knocked at the door, and Minato yelled, "Come in!"

A richly-dressed woman who looked to be in about her mid-twenties stepped in and bowed respectfully, her face politely blank. "Hokage-sama, thank you for accepting my request. I am in your debt."

Minato nodded with a small smile. "Of course, Mizuna-dono. It is an honor to be of service." His expression shifted to seriousness as he turned his gaze back to Team Seven, inwardly noting with amusement at how Kakashi had stiffened with obvious recognition at the woman's face. "You three are to protect her with everything you've got and make sure she reaches her destination unharmed. Is that understood?"

Minato wasn't usually one to go around pulling rank, but something about his tone made all of them snap to attention, even Naruto. "Yes, sir!" they said, backs ramrod straight and arms pressed rigidly to their sides.

Minato stared for a moment before offering a single nod—a dismissal.

"Well, Mizuna-sama," Kakashi turned to the noblewoman with a cheerful smile, even as she stared with bemusement at the mask covering half his face. "When would you like to get started?"

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This Mizuna lady, Naruto decided, was kind of dull.

It wasn't that she wasn't pretty—she was, in that petite noblish kind of way with delicate features and large eyes—but her personality certainly wasn't getting her any points. She never joked or even smiled, and she had the tendency not to speak unless it was with Kakashi to finalize details about their traveling arrangements.

Judging by her expensive-looking clothes and the way she carried herself, she was probably used to people waiting on her hand and foot. Naruto hoped she wouldn't try to do the same to them. In the back of his mind, Naruto wondered why so many people were giving this Mizuna lady so many stares. It wasn't like she was _that_ pretty. In the end he decided not to dwell on it.

He farewelled his mom at the village gates with a tight hug and secured a promise for ramen upon his return, and then he left with his team on his newest adventure. As Naruto walked away, Kushina's eyes grew shadowed, and she turned and walked back to her home with dark thoughts and darker intentions.

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The mission passed without incident (surprisingly).

They made it to the Great Lord's castle and passed through the gates after a brief verification of their identities, although the guards were quite hesitant to let shinobi into the castle at all. Their paranoia was annoying, but still understandable. Regular guards like them didn't stand a chance against a trained ninja, much less an entire _team_ of trained ninja.

They briefly met with the Great Lord himself, a man of average stature but with a piercing gaze, and Mizuna told Kakashi that an escort would no longer be necessary, as any protection from that point on would be provided by the Great Lord.

Their mission complete, Team Seven turned around and headed home, but not before Kakashi asked Mizuna for her autograph.

Why would he want her autograph?

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Minato was in the middle of looking through the newest batch of Academy applicants. A total of sixty this year, with more than half of them being civilian-born. It wasn't that he didn't encourage civilians from aspiring to become shinobi. _He'd_ done it, after all, despite his parents telling him over and over how much harder it would be because they weren't shinobi.

Squinting, he took a closer look at the papers in his hand. Three from the Hyūga clan, one from the Uchiha clan, one from the Yamanaka clan, three from the—

His thoughts were put on a momentary pause as someone rapped their knuckles on his door. "Come inside!" he ordered, absently straightening the piles of papers on his desk. The door opened, and the familiar faces of his son's team filed in one after the other.

"Hey, dad!" Naruto said, beaming at him. He was a bit dirty and his clothes could stand to go through a spin cycle or two in the washer, but other than that he looked alright.

"Naruto," Minato said, his own smile already crinkling the skin around his eyes. "How was the mission?"

"Boring!" was the immediate answer. Kakashi and Sakura slapped their palms to their foreheads, but Naruto continued before they could interrupt. "We didn't get to do anything but walk there and back again! The castle wasn't that cool, either. And the guards didn't really like us 'cause we're shinobi and we could totally kick their asses, but you know. Whatever. And—"

"Our mission succeeded without incident, sensei," Kakashi said, exploiting the fact that even Naruto needed to stop talking to breathe. "At the end we were dismissed and told Konoha's services were no longer required."

Minato snorted. "Disappointed you didn't get to stay and _observe_ , Kakashi?"

Even as Naruto and Sakura frowned in confusion, the silver-haired jōnin shook his head. "Not at all, sensei," Kakashi gleefully informed him. "I got her autograph."

"Wait, wait," Sakura said, pausing to make sure she had everyone's attention. "Why would Kakashi-sensei want Mizuna-sama's autograph? What's so special about the autograph of a minor noblewoman?"

Kakashi and Minato looked at each other for a moment before Minato awkwardly coughed into his fist.

"You see, Sakura," Minato explained, "Mizuna-sama is actually a rather famous adult film actress. Why she was posing as a noblewoman was none of our business, and as long as her secret identity didn't harm the mission in any way we had no reason to call her out on it."

"Eh? Adult film star?" Sakura blinked once, twice before the realization set in and she turned beet red. "We escorted a _porn star?!_ "

"One of the best, too," Kakashi confirmed, as though he wasn't admitting to being a massive pervert. "Her movies are always the most convincing. She might not be the most well-endowed, but she's _definitely_ the dirtiest."

For his part, Naruto rounded on his sensei with a distinctly betrayed look in his eyes. "You said you didn't read porn!"

Kakashi tilted his head at the boy, a quizzical look in his eye. "I _don't_ read porn. I _watch_ it."

Finally processing what she was hearing and totally scandalized, Sakura screamed, " _Kakashi-sensei!_ "

As Kakashi undertook the mountainous task of making sure Sakura didn't explode and start punching everything in sight, Naruto shot a suspicious gaze at his father. "Dad, how come _you_ knew that Mizuna lady was a porn star?"

Minato simply stared back with a beautiful deadpan that did a good job in making Naruto feel rather dull. "Naruto, in case you've forgotten, my sensei proudly calls himself a super pervert. Even if I don't go looking for this kind of stuff—which I don't—I hear all about it from him."

"O-Oh," Naruto mumbled, shuffling his feet in his embarrassment. "I guess I kind of forgot."

Naruto jumped a bit when a muffled boom sounded off and something shattered behind him, and when he turned around he saw his murderous teammate standing in front of the now-broken window with their sensei nowhere in sight, although a startled-looking flock of birds provided a rather good clue as to his flight trajectory.

Minato sighed and with a quick pulse of chakra signaled his ANBU guard, who immediately appeared out of nowhere with their heads respectfully lowered. "Cat, go find wherever Kakashi landed and bring him back."

One of the ANBU nodded and vanished with a swirl of leaves.


	7. Chōmei

**Summary : **With loving parents and plenty of friends, unease is the last thing that Naruto should be feeling. But it lingers in the back of his mind, clouding his sight with suspicion and paranoia. Why do his dreams feel so real? Why does he remember things that never were?

 **Gilded**

Chapter 7

Chōmei

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"Mom?" Naruto called into the house as he waltzed in through the front door. "I'm home!"

Just as the scent of something absolutely heavenly drifted its way passed his nose, Kushina's head poked out through the kitchen. "Back already? Couldn't stay away from my cooking, could you?"

Naruto didn't argue the point, simply nodding with a wide grin (and some drool, though it was quickly wiped away) as he slid into the swiveling chair by the kitchen counter.

After a moment, Kushina looked up from the sizzling and crackling pops of whatever it was she was stirring over the stove, the way she delicately balanced her spatula in her hand vaguely reminiscent of a sword. "Well, squirt? How'd your mission go? You didn't screw it up, did you?" She punctuated the statement with an accusing stare.

"Of course I didn't screw it up!" Naruto yelped, squirming under his mother's scrutiny. "All we did was walk the porn star lady to the castle then come back home!"

A pause, the calm before the storm.

Let it be known that Naruto had not yet learned the art of the white lie.

Kushina narrowed her eyes to damning slits of motherly judgement, and Naruto suddenly broke out into a cold sweat. "A porn star?" she asked, her voice deceptively calm. "Your father gave you a mission to escort a _porn star?_ " Her hair ominously began to twitch and move like it had a life of its own.

Naruto, no doubt sensing his impending doom, desperately tried to protest his innocence. "M-Mom," he stuttered, "it was just an escort mission! I never saw anything! I swear!"

Kushina didn't look convinced. In fact, she looked like she was moments away from tanning his hide.

Minato chose that precise moment to teleport home, right next to his son. Naruto shrieked, having already been put on the edge with his mother's anger, his father's surprise appearance being the straw that broke the camel's back, and he burst out of the house like the hounds of Hell were snapping at his heels.

Minato looked after the disappearing form of his wayward spawn, utterly baffled. "What's going on with Naruto?" he asked, half wondering if he should just chase him down and haul him back home. When no answer came, Minato frowned and turned towards his wife. "Kushina, is somethi—" He trailed off when he saw the expression his wife was wearing, and a very large part of him immediately dedicated itself to going over all escape routes.

"Mi-na-to," Kushina ground out through clenched teeth, pinning him with a stare that was like that of a cat on a mouse—wide, unblinking, and downright predatory. "A _porn star?_ You had our son escort a _porn star?_ "

Minato blinked. Was that all Kushina was mad about? "Of course I did. It was an easy escort mission, and with Kakashi's injury Team Seven hadn't left the village in a while, so I thought this would be a good chance for them to—"

Minato vanished as the spatula swung through where his head had been a mere second earlier.

He wisely decided to spend the night working at his office.

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After a long and tense conversation the following day in which Minato and Naruto somehow managed to convince Kushina that it really _was_ just an escort mission, she finally stopped threatening them with pain and suffering (much to their relief), then proceeded to call them both sissies and laugh at how fast they'd run from her (much to their annoyance).

The tense atmosphere dissolved with hugs and laughter around the kitchen table, the gentle warmth of food and family drifting in the air.

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 _Wishes are a part of human nature. Everyone wishes for what they don't have, like a genie's going to pop out of nowhere and give it to them. The cartwheel broken? Wish you had a spare? That sort of thing. The wishes that make life a bit easier._

 _But then, there are also the kinds of wishes that have_ meaning _, wishes with the power to bring great change._

 _For instance, take an orphan. This orphan wishes he wasn't cold or hungry, but more than that, he wishes he wasn't so alone. He wishes that he actually_ mattered _to someone._

 _These kinds of wishes, if granted, change entire lives. And after that, what started out as a single change becomes a cascade effect._

The door banged open. "I'm home!" Naruto yelled, slipping out of his shoes while trying to keep hold of the groceries.

 _This is one such wish._

"Welcome back!" his mother called from inside the house. "Did you get the squash?"

 _And the consequences are immeasurable._

A firm grip on the bag in his hand, Naruto walked down the hall into the kitchen.

"Yeah, it was half-off. Old man Daisuke said he had a bumper crop."

"Really? This late? Huh." Kushina frowned speculatively as she brandished a kitchen knife while leaning back against their fridge. Naruto set his heavy load down on the kitchen counter, then stretched his aching muscles.

Kushina smiled impishly. "So?" she said.

Now it was Naruto's turn to frown. "'So' what?"

Kushina scowled in a motherly 'you-know-exactly-what-I-mean-now-stop-messing-around' sort of way. Naruto gulped, then blushed. "Umm . . . Hehehe."

His mother's eyes widened. "You mean you actually did it?"

Naruto's blush darkened, and he actually looked away to hide his surging embarrassment. Kushina seemed not to notice as she squealed. "Oh, my baby boy got his first date!"

Did she really have to be so loud? This was embarrassing! "M-Mom, this really isn't—"

"Oh _hush_ , you," Kushina retorted, her tone brokering no room for objections. "We're going to celebrate this whether you want to or not!"

"I'd listen to her if I were you." Mother and son turned to see Minato casually sprawled out on the couch, thumbing through another one of his newspapers. "There's no talking your mother out of something like this."

Kushina's scowl returned. "You didn't use the door. Again."

Minato barely even looked up. Clearly he had a death wish, or was just far too used to his wife's ire. "Uh huh." He turned another page, his eyes glued to the tiny words and black-white photos.

"You _know_ how annoying it is that you don't use them. We paid good money for those!"

"Hiraishin is faster," Minato responded easily, frowning at another crossword puzzle that was criminally simplistic.

"Who cares?! This is just _lazy!_ "

Naruto rolled his eyes with a dramatic sigh, then turned away from the kitchen. These 'arguments' of theirs were pretty much routine by now. Tuning out most of the good-natured bickering, he walked towards the door. "I'm heading out! Can't keep Sakura-chan waiting!"

"I don't know, Kushina. Not walking anywhere leaves me _plenty_ of energy for the bedroom."

Naruto stopped and slowly turned around, horror dawning on his features as his eyes grew impossibly wide. He saw his mother freeze, appraise her now-smirking husband, then grin lecherously with a massive blush across her face. "Let's see you prove it, blondie!" She grabbed Minato so quickly that even he was hard-pressed to react, and in a moment they'd vanished upstairs.

Naruto stood there in a daze, his mind absolutely numb with revulsion. Then the moaning started, and Naruto practically broke down the (unlocked) door in his haste to get out of there. There were some things that no child should ever have to witness!

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Far away, a lone young man walked towards the Village Hidden in the Leaves with steel in his hand and power in his eyes. With each step he took, the leaves, the soil, the very air around him began to lose its luster and slowly fade. Yet he continued undaunted, his heart resolved.

One way or another, this world would _burn_.


	8. Gyūki

**Summary : **With loving parents and plenty of friends, unease is the last thing that Naruto should be feeling. But it lingers in the back of his mind, clouding his sight with suspicion and paranoia. Why do his dreams feel so real? Why does he remember things that never were?

 **Gilded**

Chapter 8

Gyūki

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Sakura Haruno had plenty of ideas of what her first date with Naruto would be like. Most of them revolved around the theory that Naruto would be late enough to make Kakashi-sensei proud.

She was admittedly caught off guard when she'd arrived at Ichiraku's just as the sun was beginning to set and the streetlights turned on one by one, only to find her teammate already through his fifth bowl, well into his sixth.

Frowning at the fact that he hadn't had the decency to at least wait for her, but not surprised in the slightest, Sakura sighed and slid into the seat next to his, shooting an inquiring glance at Ayame and Teuchi. They both just shrugged, apparently having no idea on what was wrong, either. But they both took one look at her nicer-than-usual attire, glanced at Naruto, then at each other with identical winces.

What was _that_ about?

Ignoring the looks, Sakura lightly bopped her teammate on the head, careful not to hit too hard, but still harder than could be called playful. "Naruto, guess who? It's the woman who you didn't bother waiting for."

Naruto froze mid-chew and looked up. "Sakura-chan?" he asked, his cheeks stuffed to near-bursting with noodles. With a visible effort, he swallowed and looked back at her, confusion clear in his eyes. "What're _you_ doing here?" he continued. "You never come to Ichiraku's unless it's with the entire team!"

There was a distinct slapping noise as Teuchi and Ayame's palms met their foreheads. Sakura could only stare in disbelief. Of all the things that could go wrong on their first date, she'd never once in a million years imagined this.

"Yo-you _forgot?_ " she whispered, her voice deathly quiet.

Naruto stilled at her tone and peered up at her cautiously. "... Sakura-chan?"

"Oh my god, you _actually_ forgot!" she screamed, mightily resisting the urge to smack his face in. This was so humiliating! This idiot had been asking her out forever, and when she finally agreed to a date he _forgot_ about it?! She'd even gone through the effort of applying makeup and wearing something that wasn't her usual kunoichi outfit!

Naruto's expression looked rather constipated as he tried to understand what his teammate was getting at. "You mean—"

Sakura grabbed her date by the collar of his orange jumpsuit and yanked him closer as she hissed, " _Yes_ , idiot!"

He blinked owlishly at her. "Was there a team meeting I didn't know about?"

Something vaguely resembling hope died inside of Sakura, and she could clearly hear the disappointed groans of their two servers somewhere behind the counter. Deep breaths, Sakura. Deep breaths. "Naruto," she said, her voice impressively calm. "Do you remember what we were talking about yesterday?"

His eyebrows pinched together. "No?" he ventured. He glanced down to where Sakura was still holding onto his shirt with her vice-grip. "Can you let me go now?"

"No. Anyway, are you _sure_ you don't remember anything? Are you _really_ sure?" Sakura honestly didn't know why she was trying anymore. She'd really been looking forward to tonight, too.

"I don't _know_ , Sakura-chan!" Naruto suddenly snapped in an odd display of aggression. As Sakura flinched back in her shock, he muttered, "I've been here all evening trying to forget about my parents doing it with each other!"

Sakura paused, startled into letting go of Naruto's jumpsuit. What the—

"They didn't even wait for me to leave before they started!" Naruto complained to his noodles that he'd curled around his chopsticks. They dripped broth in their sympathy.

Sakura's mind was reeling. Naruto had forgotten about their date because of . . . _that?_ If she was being honest with herself, she really couldn't blame him. If she'd seen her parents like that she'd be trying to purge her mind for days on end.

Momentarily distracted from his meal, Naruto turned to his teammate. "Huh," he said, giving her a quick once-over. "You look even prettier than normal, Sakura-chan. What's the special occasion?"

Sakura stared at him for the longest moment, more than a little tempted to scream and hit him (repeatedly, especially the hitting part), but in the end she decided it wasn't worth it. Besides, Naruto had already been punished enough if he'd really been unlucky enough to catch his parents in the act.

Ah, screw it. Biting her lip to hide her nervousness, she turned towards him and looked him dead in the eyes.

"Naruto, would you like to go on a date with me?"

Naruto tilted his head, not quick processing what he'd just heard. Sakura could almost imagine smoke coming out of his ears as his mind strained to deal with his current situation, and the thought made her laugh a bit and put her mind at ease. "Eh? Sorry, Sakura-chan, but I thought I might have heard you wrong or something." He chuckled sheepishly, as though berating himself. "I thought you were asking me to go on a date with you or something."

"That's _exactly_ what I'm saying," Sakura confirmed, her gaze steady and clear.

Naruto abruptly choked and devolved into a coughing fit, shying away from Sakura's touch as she made to steady him. Off to the side, Ayame nudged her father with her elbow, a knowing grin on her face, and the old man just smiled fondly and went back to chopping up meat and vegetables for their next orders.

"Bu-But," Naruto sputtered, having regained some control over his breathing, "Why would you want to go out on a date with _me?_ "

Sakura rolled her eyes. "Why _wouldn't_ I?" she retorted. Actually, there were a lot of reasons that urged her not to ask Naruto out on a date, but in the grand scheme of things they were nothing more than petty. Except for one. "Besides, _you're_ the one who asked _me_ out yesterday! _And you forgot._ "

Her teammate's mouth formed a perfectly round 'O' before it snapped shut, and his face paled. "Oh shi—"

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After Sakura had managed to calm down a bit from her rather justified anger, they decided to go for a walk through Konoha proper and enjoy each other's company for the rest of the evening. Around halfway into their walk, a Naruto clone appeared out of nowhere and handed Sakura a large bouquet of roses before giving the original a thumbs up and vanishing in a poof of white smoke.

Sakura looked down at the roses in her hand, then back at her teammate who only offered a sheepish smile. "I felt bad about forgetting, so I made a clone when you weren't looking and had it get these from Ino's parents' shop," Naruto explained, his voice calm but his eyes clearly nervous as to her reaction.

Sakura stared at him for a moment just to make him sweat a little, then giggled and hugged the bouquet to her chest. "I like them, Naruto, I really do. Thanks."

He blinked, clearly having expected her to yell at him all over again for forgetting, then seemed to deflate as he sighed in relief.

* * *

 **~o** 0 **O** 0 **o~**

Towards the end of the night they found a nice, secluded area in one of the training grounds. The air was flesh and clean, and the fireflies had just started to come out. Naruto and Sakura laid back on the soft grass and watched the stars make their way across the sky, side by side.

* * *

 **~o** 0 **O** 0 **o~**

The date ended with teasing and laughter, and as they finally arrived at Sakura's home, a brief peck on Naruto's cheek before she smiled and slipped in through her door.

Naruto stood there for the longest time, still feeling her the softness of her lips on his cheek. He couldn't remember being so happy in his entire life.

* * *

 **~o** 0 **O** 0 **o~**

 _ **Little fox, heart filled with fire**_

 _ **I can grant thine true desire.**_

* * *

Naruto flinched as the voice echoed in the hallway. It was a woman's voice, mature but not old, and silky smooth. Almost otherworldly. He looked around but couldn't for the life of him figure out where it was coming from. Slightly spooked, he began walking a little faster. He was outright sprinting by the time he got to the door he was looking for, and burst inside the room.

Sakura and Tsunade stared at Naruto.

So did their topless female patient who yelped and immediately covered her chest as best as she could, looking pleadingly towards the two medics.

Naruto worked his jaw for a moment before quietly venturing, "Is this a bad time?"

Sakura was the first to recover. " _Out_ , Naruto!" she commanded, raising her fist in a clear threat.

"But—"

" _OOOOUUUUUUUUT!_ "

And once again, Naruto found himself running away from something he'd have been better off not seeing.

Somewhere in the middle of the Land of Hot Springs, Jiraiya was trying to figure out why he felt so proud all of a sudden.

* * *

 _ **Come now, sleep in mine cocoon**_

 _ **And I shall grant thine every boon.**_

* * *

The woman's voice was growing loud enough to the point that Naruto couldn't just ignore it. He was starting to panic. What if this was some kind of a genjutsu? That would be bad. He absolutely sucked at anything even remotely genjutsu-related.

Shaking his head, he raced out of the hospital and made a beeline for his house. Mom would know what to do.

Ignoring the startled looks that people sent his way as he raced over the rooftops (the action wasn't particularly unusual, but the _speed_ certainly was), he arrived at his family's apartment and dived in through his room's open window.

"Mom?" he called. "Mom, I need your help!"

"What is it, Naruto?" he heard her answer from downstairs. "I'm in the middle of making dinner! You'll have to come downstairs if you want something!"

Without pause, Naruto yanked the door to his room open and practically jumped down the steps. "Mom!" he called again, skidding to a stop in front of the counter.

Kushina, her hair bundled up in a high ponytail, looked over from the vegetables she'd been sautéing and gave her son a once-over, instantly noting the wide eyes and the ragged breathing. Her gaze sharpened and she tilted her head at him. "What's going on?"

Naruto was about to tell her when the voice boomed in his mind.

* * *

 ** _Sleep now, child. Sleep long and well._**

* * *

Naruto sank to his knees, clutching his head, hands fisted over throbbing temples.

"Naruto?!" Kushina cried out, reaching out to steady him.

He flinched at her ice-cold touch, and when he looked up his eyes traced across long, sharpened nails and pale skin to the flowing robes of nobility.

". . . Mom?" he whispered, his voice tiny and frightened.

Slowly, he lifted his gaze.

* * *

 ** _Sleep as thine old world turns to Hell._**

* * *

Gone was the blood-red hair of the Uzumaki, in its place bone-white strands. Pale skin, paler eyes, and twin horns jutting from her crown. At the center of her forehead, a single, rippled eye stared back at him, wide and unblinking.

" _Mom?_ " Naruto breathed. _Is that really you?_

Kaguya simply tilted her head. "What's wrong, Naruto?"

Naruto's eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he slumped over in a dead faint.

* * *

 **~o** 0 **O** 0 **o~**

At Konoha's gates, Sasuke stopped and kept his gaze trained forward to where he sensed Naruto, and _her_. At his silent command, his eyes spun and his power roared to life.

"I've come for you, _Kaguya!_ "

His chakra spiked and ignited, and in the fraction of a second more than half of Konoha was roasting in Amaterasu's ebon flames. Sasuke continued into the village, killing everyone who came at him without hesitation or effort. These people weren't real, this village wasn't real, this entire _world_ wasn't real.

His mission was clear.

He would free Naruto from this false reality and burn the lies away.


	9. Kurama

**Summary : **With loving parents and plenty of friends, unease is the last thing that Naruto should be feeling. But it lingers in the back of his mind, clouding his sight with suspicion and paranoia. Why do his dreams feel so real? Why does he remember things that never were?

 **Gilded**

Chapter 9

Kurama

* * *

 **~o** 0 **O** 0 **o~**

* * *

These illusions may have worn the faces of people he once knew, but that didn't stop Sasuke.

It didn't even slow him down.

As they rushed towards him with anger and fear warring in their expressions, he cut them down, crushed their bones, pierced their chests, and set them ablaze. He was an unstoppable machine, murdering Konoha's shinobi with brutal efficiency, expertly wielding his eyes to their fullest extent.

One by one, each person he'd killed changed, losing both color and clothing until they were inhuman with sickly white skin and distorted features. Within moments, hundreds of slain Zetsus lay slumped against burning buildings and sprawled in the streets with limbs hacked off and bodies pierced and on fire. Sasuke only ignored this new development, steadily making his way forward.

Naruto was dead ahead, his chakra signature bright and vibrant right next to _her_ icy presence.

That made things easier, both of his objectives being in the same place. He concentrated for a moment and felt his eyes _twist_ as the Susanō materialized around him: bones and flesh, then armor, a ceremonial mask, and enormous wings. The false shinobi of the Infinite Tsukuyomi looked on in horror as Sasuke stood in the crown jewel of a warrior god, finally realizing that they'd never stood a chance to begin with.

Sasuke wasn't even looking at them. Without a moment's pause, the giant crouched and leaped high into the air, the resulting gale blowing the false shinobi clear off their feet. Around them, Konoha continued to burn black in the night.

* * *

 **~o** 0 **O** 0 **o~**

 _"_ That _child failed? Serves him right. Imagine what would happen if_ he _became a ninja."_

 _Sitting alone on the swings, watching as the other children's parents came to congratulate them._

 _Feeling lonely._

 _Hating himself for it._

The water sucked at his knees, so still that the tiniest movement sent it into a cascade of ripples. Rusted steel walls loomed on all sides. His breath came out in cloudy puffs, and a deep chill was beginning to seep through his skin. If it weren't for the dim lights spaced out on the walls of the hallway, he was certain he wouldn't have been able to see at all. But rather than wonder where he was, Naruto focused his attention high above his head as various images flashed on the wall in front of him, accompanied by voices, sensations, even feelings.

 _Memory_ , something inside of him said.

 _Even his homeroom teacher looked at him with nothing but disdain and loathing. "It's best to just ignore that boy."_

They made his chest ache.

 _Faces crowded the dark around him, screaming. "Just disappear, you vermin!"_

And his eyes sting.

 _Always screaming. "We'd all be better off if you weren't around!"_

His fingers had drifted and were clutched over his chest. He felt his own heart beating through them, and it hurt, every beat hurt. He didn't bother trying to hold back the tears spilling out of his eyes. "What is this?" he whispered. For whatever reason, at that moment the memories changed pace.

 _A decision made, a burning resolve and a will to protect. "If you ever lay a hand on Iruka-sensei, I'll kill you!"_

 _Hands tracing over names etched into stone. A life-defining piece of wisdom. "Those who disobey the rules are scum, but those who abandon their comrades are worse than scum."_

Failure after failure only bred determination.

 _"Don't underestimate me! I don't quit and I don't run! You can act tough all you want! You're not gonna scare me off! No way! I don't care if I DO get stuck as a Genin for the rest of my life! I'll still be Hokage someday!"_

From loneliness came understanding.

 _"It's almost unbearable, isn't it? The feeling of being totally alone."_

True pain gave rise to wisdom, and forgiveness.

 _"Ero-Sennin believed that I'd be the one to break this cycle of hatred. If there's such a thing as peace, I'll seize it!"_

The images went by faster and faster, so fast that they began to blur until Naruto was barely able to stand under the whirlwind of the accompanying emotions. "What is this . . ." he croaked.

Then the memories stalled, the burden eased, and Naruto felt a chill down his spine as one last memory pulsed.

 _"We don't want your fake reality!"_

The images froze, then faded, leaving behind nothing but the massive, rusted steel wall. The wall was suddenly pierced from the other side: great, ivory claws that ripped and shredded with an earsplitting metallic shriek until a large, makeshift gap was torn open. Naruto staggered back into the water, his heart thundering furiously in his surprise.

In the inky darkness beyond the wall, a giant, burning blood-red eye easily twice as tall as he was glared down at him. A primitive instinct arose, and the overwhelming urge to run set Naruto's limbs shaking with adrenaline, but he couldn't make himself move.

 **"Naruto . . ."** Its voice was the deafening boom of a mountain of gravel scraping against iron. Under Naruto's fearful gaze, the beast's head emerged: a long snout with a mouth full of sharpened teeth, lips curled back in a feral snarl. Tall ears rested flat against the back of its head, and its fur was a dull, rusty red in the dim lighting.

Naruto stumbled backwards, unable to tear his eyes away from the monstrous creature. By now it had forced over half its body through the gap, its every motion sending chest-high waves sloshing every which way. The beast continued forward until it was standing directly over him, and then it stopped and lowered its head so that Naruto was staring directly in its eyes, a rumbling growl building in the back of its throat.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Naruto wondered how anything could possibly be so big. This thing, this _demon_ , easily dwarfed any building in Konoha. Hell, it was probably bigger than the entire Hokage Monument. Now that its body was completely visible, Naruto realized that he was staring at a gargantuan fox. A fox with nine . . . tails . . .

"Holy shit," he whispered, the realization hitting him like a freight train, ice flooding his veins as it suddenly became harder to breathe. He was dead. He was so, so dead.

The Tailed-Beast puffed at him, steaming air spilling out of its nostrils: the only warning before it _roared_ and the sound barrier crumpled like paper.

 **" _WAKE UP!_ "**

* * *

Naruto's eyes snapped wide open.

* * *

It came back to him all at once.

Years of sadness and isolation, the moment he learned determination and strength. The day his resolve ignited into a burning will of fire, and Iruka-sensei gave him his Konoha headband.

His whisper came out of a dry throat through cracked lips, as though he'd been sleeping for days. "I _remember_."

Slowly, surely, Uzumaki Naruto picked himself up off the ground, all the while aware of the woman standing just a few feet away. The first thing he noticed about her was her bone-white hair, perfectly straight, not a strand out of place. Such a stark contrast to the blood-red he was so familiar with.

Kaguya narrowed her pale eyes and pursed her lips. "Thou seemeth tired, mine son," she observed, her voice rich and hauntingly musical, the words lingering in the air a bit longer than they should have. "Thou shouldst rest some more." As though reinforcing the suggestion, the Rinnegan on her forehead pulsed ever so slightly, and Naruto felt a small but growing urge to lay down and sleep. Only for a few minutes. He was sure he'd get back up before—

Naruto steadied himself with a hand on the kitchen counter and couldn't quite stop the breathless laugh that bubbled out of his chest as he realized what Kaguya had been trying to do. "You are _not_ my mom," he all but snarled. "My mom was named Uzumaki Kushina, and she was the best mom in the whole world! You could never replace her!"

Kaguya's frown deepened, her tiny eyebrows drawing close together. "Why doth thee fighteth against me? 'Twas such a nice dream." She sounded confused, _genuinely_ confused that anyone would even _want_ to wake up from her genjutsu.

The teen closed his eyes and lowered his head. "Was _any_ of it real?"

Kaguya pursed her lips. "Why wouldst it matter? Thou believed they wast real."

Naruto growled low and deep, still forced to steady himself against the counter. "It was a _lie_."

Kaguya tilted her head to the side, her expression growing puzzled. "Is a lie truly such a bad thing? Thou had everything thou'd ever wanted. Thou were'st happy, Naruto."

"You don't _get_ it, do you?" Naruto snapped, raising his head and staring the goddess straight in the eyes. "You can't just take away people's pain and suffering. Even if it hurts, it makes us who we are. Without that, we're just shadows."

"Doth that truly justify allowing people to liveth through the agony of the real world?" Kaguya countered, seemingly content to merely watch as Naruto struggled to remain standing. "If pain and suffering is one's idea of the perfect world, the Infinite Tsukuyomi will grant it without disturbing others. Thine ideals are selfish, Naruto. Thou would take away everyone's happiness just to satisfy your own."

Little by little, Kaguya's language became more modern about a word or two at a time, changing her dialect into a baffling mix of old and new. That didn't stop what she was saying from being bat-shit insane.

Naruto gritted his teeth, his gaze going hard and flinty. "It's not about my _happiness_ ," he spat.

In his mind's eye, Neji looked at him solemnly. At the Hyūga's side stood his mom and dad, Ero-sennin, Nagato, Konan, Hokage-jiji, and hundreds upon hundreds of others. Every single person who had given up their life in the hope of something better. They had all trusted _him_ to make a difference in their stead.

Naruto's fist clenched so tightly that he was sure his bones were going to crack.

"It's about you making everyone's hard work and sacrifices meaningless! There's no way I would let you or anyone else do something like that!"

He shoved himself away from the counter, wobbling for a moment or two as he struggled to find his balance. When he failed to fall, he looked up, only to find Kaguya glaring down at him.

"Foolish child," she scolded, her dark lips twisted in her disapproval. "You fight me to find purpose in pointless deaths that could have been avoided? You and your flawed morals will only get in the way of what is best for this world. Only _I_ am suitable to govern and grant this war-torn land true peace."

A terrible rage set ablaze in Naruto's chest at her words. "You call _this_ peace?!" he cried incredulously. "You call this _peace?!_ You made everyone your slave! How the hell do you call something like that peace?!"

Kaguya's chakra pulsed, and the veins around her eyes bulged prominently on her face in a clear threat. "One such as you could never understand."

Naruto's blood roared in his ears, and he briefly saw red. "You're damn right I'd never understand!"

He was mere seconds away from lunging at the demonic bitch when she inhaled sharply and looked up at the ceiling. Naruto narrowed his eyes then just as he dared to follow her gaze, the ceiling caved in.

The apartment collapsed with tens of tons of concrete débris pinning him to the ground. After Naruto pulled himself free of the wreckage and into the humid night's air, coughing concrete dust out of his lungs and doing his best to ignore the many bruises that were sure to darken after a few hours, he paused as he heard something above the crackling flames.

Dozens upon dozens of screams that seemed to have come out of nowhere.

"What the—"

But he didn't have time to ponder this new development when he heard something over his shoulder.

"Yo, Naruto."

Not something. Some _one_.

Almost too afraid to believe it, Naruto turned to see a familiar young man resting in the crown jewel of a translucent purple giant, his patterned eyes blazing with the power of the Firstborn. Blood caked his pale skin and his clothes were ripped and torn, making him look like he'd been through Hell and back again. And who was to say that he hadn't been?

"Sasuke?" Naruto called hesitantly.

From high off the ground, Sasuke snorted, the skin around his eyes crinkling in wry amusement, jet-black hair brushing over his face with the motion. "Let's get out of this fake world."

Naruto grinned, lightheaded in his relief. This was the real Sasuke, not one of those fakes that Kaguya had created. "About time you got here, bastard. I was wondering when you'd show up."

Sasuke deadpanned at the comment, the Susanō's head shifting to look down at Naruto. "I don't recall being the one dumb enough to get trapped by this genjutsu in the first place."

Naruto bristled, and just as he was about to hurl his own insults back at the Uchiha, he was cut off by an unearthly scream that sent shivers down his spine.

" _I will not allow it!_ "

Naruto and Sasuke turned with identical grimaces. The Rabbit Goddess hovering in the sky about sixty feet off the ground, wind billowing around flowing robes and long white hair. The veins around her eyes bulged and the Rinnegan in the center of her forehead darted around wildly in her rage. Her lips pulled back in a sneer as she hissed, her once musical voice now discordant and darker than her expression. "You scattered chakras cannot hope to defeat me. I am supreme and invincible, and I shall usher in a new era free of war and conflict."

" _Kaguya_ ," Sasuke hissed, his Susanō pulling a twin chakra-swords out of the air and brandishing them menacingly, "this world has no need for your brand of 'peace'."

"That's right!" Naruto agreed, his voice low and solemn. "We don't want your fake world!"

An oppressive atmosphere fell over the land. The air grew thick and syrupy, and temperature plummeted. Overhead in the night sky, the moon shone unnaturally bright and _red_ as the distinct tomoe'd patterns marking the ultimate genjutsu appeared on its surface.

Naruto gasped and swayed on his feet, all of a sudden growing weak in the knees, realizing that he could no longer move.

"Naruto!" he heard Sasuke shout. "You have to resist her influence! You have to fight it or the world is doomed!" Despite the warning, Naruto didn't see Sasuke moving either.

"Insolent, wretched worms," Kaguya said, her voice terrible and cold as she ominously floated closer, her robes and hair fluttering with the motion. "You _dare_ defy me and disrupt the peace I have brought about? You shall be punished!"

Naruto lowered his gaze, his entire body shaking with the effort of resisting Kaguya's will.

"It is useless," she declared, immediately divining his intentions. "You are in a world of my making. I have total and complete control." She floated closer, and closer, and Naruto refused to look up, straining against the invisible chains. "Why do you continue to fight, Asura? You and Indra could have the perfect world, the one you've always dreamed of, if only you would not resist."

He felt her icy touch rest on his shoulder before it moved to brush the hair away from his eyes, her nails razor-sharp against his skin. There was something caring about the motion, almost motherly.

Naruto snapped.

Kaguya gasped when he looked up at her with blood-red eyes, pupils slitted like a beast's, and something dark and ancient was unleashed. Naruto heard the voice of an old friend echoing in his head.

 **Let us meld our chakra, you and I.**

There was a sudden jolt, and then Naruto's body lit up like the sun as dense chakra enveloped his form, tracing black patterns over his clothes and his face. The familiar rush of sage mode came roaring back, drawn fast by the beacon of energy that was the Tailed-Beast chakra, and Naruto felt his awareness expand as he surrendered himself to the vastness of nature. Seemingly out of nowhere, nine fist-sized black orbs materialized and hovered protectively behind Naruto.

He shrugged off Kaguya's influence with the ease of a duck rolling water off of its back

Kaguya reeled back as though struck, her eyes wide and her mouth dropped open. "You—How could you—"

"Naruto!"

Just as Kaguya and Naruto turned to look, Sasuke was already diving to his teammate's side, his left fist outstretched. No other words needed to be spoken. Naruto could sense the peerless power of Indra humming in Sasuke's fist, resonating with Asura's bottomless strength in his own right hand. What he did next was purely out of instinct.

He _reached_.

Before Kaguya could so much as react, their fists collided, and their chakra merged to become something greater. Eyes and body, Yin and Yang. The power detonated, creating a shockwave that blasted Kaguya away as she desperately lunged for them, and the genjutsu shattered, little fragments of reality tumbling away.

Far away in another world, the Sage of Six Paths smiled.

* * *

 **~o** 0 **O** 0 **o~**

The Rabbit Goddess of the Moon came to lying flat on her back. Something hot and sticky was dripping down her face. Frowning, she reached up to wipe it off. Her hand came away red. She blinked, then scrambled onto her feet. When she looked around, she found herself in a barren wasteland, her feet sinking into desert sand.

The Infinite Tsukuyomi, the unbreakable illusion, her perfect world.

It was gone! It was all gone!

Kaguya screamed, her shrill voice ripping at the air, blasting away nearby sand with its force.

Even in the midst of her rage, she was able to sense the ebon flames of Amaterasu forming behind her. She effortlessly twisted her body out of the way, turning to glare lividly at the Uchiha who had cast it even as the black fire smashed into a sand dune almost a mile away where she knew it would burn for seven days and seven nights.

Sasuke and Naruto stood side by side, their scattered chakras somehow managing to stand strong against her, the Original. Kaguya felt a cold fury wash away her white-hot rage, and slowly, her thoughts calmed. One way or another, they would _pay_.

The young men in front of her each took a challenging step forward, and then another, and another until they were running towards her at speeds that made the very air scream. Kaguya only waited, and just as they were upon her, she attacked.

* * *

 **~o** 0 **O** 0 **o~**

The battle with Kaguya was one of the hardest and most dangerous fights of Naruto's entire life.

The only thing keeping him from being blown off the face of the earth was the fact that Sasuke had his back. They moved like they'd been fighting together for years, anticipating the other's attacks and moving in to support, coordinating assaults without a word.

All that amounted to was surviving. Barely.

* * *

 **~o** 0 **O** 0 **o~**

Kaguya lashed out with all the immortal power that Orochimaru had pursued for most of his life with a devastating fury. But somehow, Sasuke failed to fall, and Naruto refused to die.

The Rabbit Goddess gazed upon the scattered chakras before her and felt her anger grow. "Wretched fools. You would destroy the world's greatest chance for peace? Such a thing is unforgivable."

Sasuke stepped in line with Naruto, and Kaguya could feel their energy resonating with one another. How had Asura and Indra become so close? "Is there nothing more for you to say, _Kaguya?_ " Sasuke said, his voice brimming with poisonous hatred. "Your reign has come to an end."

Kaguya's face remained expressionless, untouched, but something deep within her stirred at the words. A white-hot indignant fury. "Come, then, would-be usurper," she challenged, gripping the world with her power. "Try to overthrow me."

One second they were standing amidst a sea of sand and mile-high desert dunes. In the next, they were in a world of fire and bubbling molten rock.

Naruto yelped as he found himself falling face-first towards a river of lava. Sasuke immediately summoned a large hawk midair, landing on its back whilst directing it to catch Naruto before he fell any further. After a moment of scrambling and muttered arguing, Naruto joined Sasuke on the hawk's back as they looked around with confusion and apprehension struggling in their features.

Satisfied that they were occupied for now, Kaguya was content to simply watch.

"Is this another genjutsu?" Naruto wondered, looking with open awe at a land of fire and ash with smoky skies and stinging air. "What's the point if we already know it's an illusion?" Despite Naruto's assertion that this was just an illusion, Kaguya didn't miss the way his fingers tightened over the hawk summon's feathers. It seemed he wasn't keen on testing that theory.

"This isn't an illusion," Sasuke answered, his tone hard and firm.

Naruto looked over at him, scowling at what he saw. "What?!" he exclaimed, his voice absolutely incredulous. "A world of lava?! What kind of stupid world is that?!"

Sasuke merely glanced at his spiritual brother. "I can feel the heat, and I can smell sulfur in the air. But most of all, I know that this world is real because I can _see_ it." The Rinnegan seemed to glow a bit brighter in the fire's red light.

Slowly, they looked up to Kaguya who was floating high above them in the air. "You mean she actually—" Naruto trailed off, and inwardly Kaguya purred with satisfaction at the way his expression went slack at the realization.

Sasuke nodded, his jaw clenched and his lips pulled back into the snarl of a cornered beast. "She summoned us to another world."

Naruto's mouth dropped open, and his eyes filled with something that resembled fear before his expression quickly morphed into a determined glare. "No matter what she does, we can't afford to lose. Not when everyone's depending on us." Naruto crouched on the hawk's back, touched his hands to the softness of its feathers, and then he shot up into the air so fast that all Sasuke saw was a yellow flash.

Kaguya was ready for him. Even as Naruto lashed out with one of his Truth-Seeker orbs, Kaguya stretched her awareness and her chakra pulsed, nullifying the attack and sending the volcanic land below into a frenzy of eruptions that seared the very air. As she forced Naruto back with barely any effort on her part, she paused at the look of triumph on his face. Her confusion was immediately addressed when Sasuke, in the crown of the warrior god Susanō, dove at her from the sky with a colossal blade at the ready.

Kaguya scoffed, and with a single well-placed strike the mighty Susanō was blown to bits, its summoner sent hurtling towards the ground. Naruto, hurled away by the blast, reached out with a hand of pure golden chakra, barely managing to snag Sasuke before he was burned alive in the lava below. "Sasuke, snap out of it!" he screamed.

Sasuke grunted, before using the chakra arm as a foothold to scramble back up to where Naruto was floating. The two didn't say anything, but somehow Naruto knew to flatten one of his Truth-Seeker orbs for Sasuke to use as a platform. "Is this one of the powers you received?" the Uchiha asked after he'd firmly landed on the flattened surface. "The ability to fly?"

"Looks like it!" Naruto replied. "We're gonna need it if we have to fight in this shitty world! Now let's— _where'd she go?!_ "

Sasuke looked up and stiffened with shock. Kaguya had vanished. He and Naruto stretched their senses to the max, desperately searching, but they could find nothing. Then, from directly behind them, something gave off a low and menacing hiss.

Just as they turned around, something horribly cold brushed against their foreheads and they found themselves paralyzed. Kaguya stroked their faces tenderly with sharpened nails, ignoring the horror in their eyes. As she held them, she was reminded of a time long ago, of her own beloved sons and how they'd turned against her. The sting of betrayal and the wretched agony of heartbreak came rushing back at the memories, and Kaguya couldn't stop the tears from spilling over her cheeks.

 _Asura and Indra_ , she thought. _You are so like my sons, headstrong and foolish._ Here, her expression turned bitter and her eyes grew hard, her hands wrapping firmly around the teenagers' throats. _Never again will I allow you to turn against me. Now, you're mine._

With a silent command, their life-force began to drain from their bodies, steadily feeding her with their energy.

Even though he was paralyzed, Naruto managed a strangled grunt. "She's . . . taking our chakra!"

Sasuke shuddered, then seemed to go limp as he closed his eyes. But when he opened them, Kaguya sensed Indra's diminishing chakra spike and ignite.

" _Amaterasu._ "

Before the flames could even begin to take shape, Kaguya was gone, and black fire scattered harmlessly over molten rock.

The young men gasped as they were released, Naruto wobbling precariously as he suspended himself over the lava below. "Where the hell did she—"

Right in front of them, the air grew ominously dark and seemed to force itself apart, and from the abyss beyond a single rippled eye glared.

Sasuke glared right back and summoned his chakra to his eyes for another burst of unholy fire. Yet, just before the release, Kaguya's power pulsed and the world of fire vanished, leaving Naruto and Sasuke completely encased in ice and snow.

They found themselves in a frozen world of icicles and glaciers, and a deep, bitter chill that seeped into their bones and robbed them of their warmth.

Kaguya slipped out of her inter-dimensional portal and tutted at them mockingly, floating in the air while the young men were still stuck in the block of ice. "This is my dimension. You cannot do anything."

Even though they were completely immobilized, Kaguya swore she heard their vitriol snorts. Then slowly, the black orbs of the Tailed-Beasts that hovered Naruto's back began to slither through the ice, easily melting their way through the solid structure and weakening its foundation. Treacherous feelings of nervousness creeped their way into the back of Kaguya's mind.

At the exact moment when the Truth-Seeker Orbs had eaten their way through, the glacier exploded as shafts of black fire speared through the ice, and in a burst of steam and powdered snow with huge chunks of ice flying every which way, Naruto and Sasuke were free.

Kaguya stared. _Maybe these two are truly strong. Or perhaps it is I who_ _—_ She subdued the thought with an irritated scowl and slipped through another dimensional rift.

* * *

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After hours of fighting, they ended up in a world a waves and water farther than the eye could see. The setting sun sent beams of light reflecting every which way, giving the area an oddly melancholic feel to it. The air smelled of salt, and huge, dark shapes circled ominously in the depths below. Jagged fins breached the surface in clear warning, and Kaguya could _feel_ the bottomless hunger that drove these creatures mad.

She paid them no heed, though, well out of their range by floating several hundred above the ocean. Her eyes were trained far away, towards a cloud of dust at the edge of the horizon. As she watched, the cloud expanded, almost as if the dust was alive. Then, brushing up against the very limits of her senses, she felt a spark so tiny it was almost unworthy of being noticed. But that spark grew and grew until it became a familiar flame.

It was at that moment she realized what she was looking at. Her eyes narrowed, and her lips pursed as the strangest sense of apprehension crept up on her.

 _Asura's . . . clones?_

There were so many that they blotted out the sky, and all of them tore towards her at speeds that made the air shriek as Kaguya felt Asura's flame burst into a raging inferno. Out of the corner of her vision, she saw the sea monsters flee and vanish into the deep. They must have sensed the approaching danger somehow.

But it did not matter. Asura and Indra could not hope to beat her. She was the Source, and they merely held scattered remnants of her son's inherited powers. Whether it was now or later, they would fall, and nothing would stand in the way of her peace.

Kaguya looked at the incoming army with the cold indifference that only divinity could muster. "It matters not how many I must face. The result is the same." She sped up to meet them, her long her writhing in response to her unleashed rage.

She pointed, and lightning, true godly _lightning_ came streaming out through her fingers, obliterating the clone army with overwhelming bursts of energy. By the time she lowered her hands, the air smelled of ozone, and the sky was clouded with white smoke.

Kaguya frowned as the wind howled and the smoke began to disperse. Asura's fire had vanished, but something warned her it wouldn't be that simple.

She didn't have to wait for long. Just as she looked up, a golden Kyūbi encased in Susanō armor dove down through the clouds with an earsplitting battle cry, a massive sword of black flames brandished mightily. Asura's flame had returned, and with it came the cold thunderbolt of Indra's power.

Kaguya sneered, and shot up to meet them.

She reached, the armored Kyūbi slashed, and there was a flash of white-hot pain. After her mind had cleared, Kaguya watched in undisguised horror as her severed right arm fell to the waves below, streams of crimson trailing behind it. Grimacing in her agony, she quickly forced another portal open and vanished through it just as the Kyūbi brought its blade up for another swipe.

Directly behind Naruto and Sasuke, a dimensional rift opened, and Kaguya emerged with an unearthly screech. The boys barely had time to react before the goddess shot something bright from her hand, and there was an explosion with enough power to erase a city as the hundreds of gallons of water vaporized almost instantly, clouding the area with steam.

But despite all that, when the steam cleared, Naruto and Sasuke stood tall and defiant, the Susanō that had shielded them cracked but still whole, the golden Kyūbi underneath completely untouched. From inside the sheltered crown of the Kyūbi's head, Sasuke gave a dark chuckle. "You are wearing thin, Kaguya. How much longer can you last?"

Naruto didn't say anything, merely holding a hand out in front of him while the Tailed-Beast he controlled opened its jaws as wide as it could, supercharging the air with its chakra until it pooled into a dark purple ball the size of a small mountain. As he did so, Kaguya could feel air being drained from the skies, sucked into the developing technique until it began to shriek as four blades of light circled it ominously.

With a grunt of effort, Naruto hurled the Tailed-Beast Bomb towards her, and Sasuke chose that moment to lace the technique with spikes of his Amaterasu. What was once a devastating technique became a promise of death.

In her heart Kaguya knew she couldn't take on something like that and remain unharmed.

Worry and doubt wormed its way into her mind as she threw herself out of the way, and she grew sloppy and frustrated. Through it all Naruto and Sasuke came at her with a relentless determination that only grew stronger and stronger with each strike.

With only one arm left, Kaguya resorted to guerrilla tactics and retreated, darting out in blitz attacks from dimensional rifts, never lingering long enough for them to counter, always striking where they were most vulnerable. Yet it was always a clone that managed to worm its way in front of a lethal blow, or a Susanō that deflected the worst of her strikes.

She was beginning to feel the strain of prolonged battle and fell back to her home dimension of patterned stone hills for a brief respite, only to find herself caught completely off guard when the scattered chakras followed her through the rift she'd made.

As she watched, stunned, Naruto and Sasuke took the chance to look around.

"Where are we this time?" Naruto asked, eyes roving critically. "This world doesn't even have any trees. What kind of world doesn't have trees?"

Instead of telling Naruto to shut up like usual, Sasuke had a calculating gleam in his eye. "This place . . . it's not like the others."

Naruto turned, his eyes squinted in confusion. "Huh? What do you mean 'not like the others'?"

From off to the side, Kaguya gritted her teeth. That those two were here in her own home dimension was a disgrace of the highest order. Normally she would have killed them outright for the insult, but she was too worn down by the repeated dimensional travel to muster any sort of an attack.

Even as Kaguya cursed her helplessness, Sasuke knelt and touched the ground, his hand tracing over the lines on the patterned rock. As tired as she was, Kaguya could still feel his Rinnegan pulse. "Unbelievable . . ." she heard him whisper, before he looked up to his bewildered teammate.

"What? What'd you find?" Naruto asked, curious despite having been fighting for his life mere minutes ago.

" _This_ is the world that connects all of the others. It is where she goes to travel through all of the different dimensions." Sasuke raised his head, and Kaguya swore his mismatched eyes held a predatory gleam. She silently snarled, exhaustion rendering her immobile.

"Naruto," Sasuke said, his voice hard and thin like ninja wire. "She's weak. We can't hesitate now."

When Naruto turned to stare at her, she almost flinched at the cold and distant look in his eyes. Despite spending months with him in their perfect world as his mother, did he truly feel nothing? Where had she gone wrong? Why was he betraying her like this? Why was he _looking_ at her like that? And why . . . why did it cause her so much pain?

With a yell so loud that even from dozens of yards away Kaguya winced, Naruto instantly formed two Bijū-powered rasenshurikens, one bearing blue-gold seal-markings and carrying the scent of a desert, and the other brimming with the explosive power of a volcano, bright with the red-hot glow of molten rock.

He hurled them at her, and this time Kaguya was too exhausted to dodge. When the smoke cleared, she was still there, having managed to survive more or less intact with a partial deflection, but something was _wrong_.

She felt her body violently shift and churn as bestial heads took form, struggling away from her control. She could feel her awareness fading as the monsters imprisoned within her fought their way free, as her form reverted to a more primal, rabbit-like state.

Something inside her pulsed, and Kaguya's rage surged. Within mere seconds, the beasts inside her were subdued, and her body was human once again.

But she was tired. So, so tired.

When Yin and Yang faced her together once more, Kaguya feared defeat.

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In the end, the corrupted goddess was banished and sealed, and bit by bit, the world awakened from the eternal dream.

It wasn't the peace that Kaguya had strived for, but it was cooperation between the five great nations.

It wasn't happiness for everyone, but it wasn't a lie.

And it wasn't a perfect world, but it was theirs.

They were free.

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A few months later, Naruto trained his gaze towards the setting sun from where he sat at the edge of the Hokage mountain. Dying light spilled over the horizon, painting the village in shades of red and gold and everything in between. This was where he'd come whenever he wanted to be by himself, whenever he had to think. It was silly, but it felt like the past Hokage were helping him somehow.

A warm breeze whispered through the trees carrying with it loose foliage that gave a dry rustle, and Naruto heaved a sigh, drawing up his legs and resting his chin on his knees.

"What's wrong now, idiot?"

Naruto didn't even bother to turn his head. "Not now, bastard. Leave me alone."

Sasuke arched a brow at that and promptly ignored the order, taking a seat next to his friend on the rough sandstone of the mountain. They sat together in silence, Naruto watching the sunset and Sasuke watching Naruto until the Uzumaki got tired of being watched.

"Would you quit _looking_ at me?!" he snapped. "You're creeping me the hell out!"

Sasuke stared back, unimpressed. "I'll stop when you tell me what's bothering you."

Naruto huffed, wrinkling his nose and furrowing his brow. "Well tough luck. I'm not telling."

Sasuke narrowed his eyes. "You would think that the two of us saving the would would be a cause for celebration, not a signal to wallow in our depression."

"I'm not _depressed_ ," Naruto protested. "I'm—" He hesitated, cutting himself off, then his head sank lower until his chin was resting on knees again. After an uncomfortable pause, Naruto sighed. "I see her in my dreams," he admitted with a croak. Sasuke's mismatched eyes widened in alarm, and Naruto immediately addressed the budding suspicion. "Relax, bastard. They're just normal dreams, not crazy-ass mind techniques or anything like that."

"Are you _insane?!_ " Sasuke hissed. "How could you possibly know that they're just dreams?!"

" _Because_ ," Naruto hissed right back, "the first time I had them I went straight to Ino. She _promised_ there was nothing wrong with me."

Reluctantly, Sasuke backed down, but Naruto could still see the wariness in his eyes. The silence dragged until the sun had set, and one by one the lights flickered on in the village below, bright yellow dots against an increasingly darkening backdrop. The buzz of Konoha's nightlife filled the air, and the crickets began to sing.

"She loved me, you know," Naruto eventually said, so soft that Sasuke almost strained to hear it. "She wanted so _badly_ to be a mother, to have someone to love as her child, someone to take care of." He lowered his head, and his hair swept over his eyes, shadowing them as his voice hitched like he had the hiccups.

"And . . . I wanted to have a mom again. I wanted to know what it was like to have someone say "Do your best" or "Welcome home". It's really messed up, huh? To think that I'd want that fake world. I really am pathetic." Naruto swiped at his eyes as he sniffed, stubbornly ignoring the wetness on his cheeks.

For a long time Sasuke didn't say anything, only watching as his teammate fought a losing battle with the tears. Eventually, he stood and stared up at the perfect circle of the full moon. "To want a happy life is not pathetic." Naruto looked at him with puffy red eyes and a snot-filled nose, and Sasuke continued, "No-one can fault you for wanting what you've been denied. You are not weak for your desires. You're strong for knowing what was right."

Naruto's face crumpled, and he lowered his head and clenched his jaw. For the first time that night the tears flowed freely down his face.

Like a sentinel, Sasuke watched over his friend as the stars passed by overhead.

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 **+o— THE END —o+**

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 **Author's Note:** _That's the end. Thanks to everyone who followed, fav'd, and reviewed. You have no idea how much I appreciate that someone actually likes the stuff that I write._

 _Anyway, some explanations are in order now that the story's complete._

 _1) Iruka._

 _Back in the first chapter, the memory with Iruka-sensei? Iruka doesn't exist in Naruto's world because the world was created by Kaguya and what_ she _assumed would be best for Naruto. Iruka came and saved Naruto from the loneliness of his childhood, but Kaguya wants to make Naruto forget about that loneliness altogether. So she took the easy route and just got rid of Iruka entirely._

 _2) Why this is NaruSaku._

 _Believe it or not, I'm pairing neutral. But there is a logical explanation for why this is NaruSaku._

 _Naruto is a moron. Simple as that. After Hinata confessed to him during Pein's invasion, Naruto didn't say a_ word _to her. Even after Neji's last words, "Naruto, never forget that Hinata-sama is willing to die for you," he_ still _acted like nothing had changed. It was only until "Naruto: The Last" that he finally realized that Hinata loves him._

 _At this point in time, Naruto was still chasing after Sakura. Hell, when Minato asked, Naruto even claimed that Sakura was his girlfriend._

 _This has nothing to do with whether Sakura would have returned his feelings or not. This is Naruto's_ fantasy _._ _Thus, he and Sakura go on that date he always bothered her about._

 _Do I think that one girl is better than the other? Of course not. I don't believe in true love or anything like that._

 _3) Kakashi's porn._

 _Gone are the smut novels and in come the hardcore movies._

 _This was more for humor's sake than anything else._

 _4) The memory at the beginning of chapter 3._

 _That was of Naruto and Sasuke's battle at the Valley of the End, way back when Sasuke defected from Konoha to train under Orochimaru._

 _5) Naruto collapsing in chapter 4._

 _Some memories are stronger than others, and the memory of Pein's assault was particularly powerful._

 _6_ _) Tora._

 _That cat is a mystery. ;)_

 _7) The first scene of chapter 6._

 _That was the real world Sasuke defeating fake!Itachi and slowly walking away._

 _8) Why the genjutsu started breaking at all._

 _It was Sasuke's fault. The genjutsu would have remained stable if Sasuke hadn't invaded. His Rinnegan slowly unravelled the illusion, and that in turn unleashed Naruto's suppressed memories. When Sasuke arrived at Konoha's gates, Naruto's false memories fell apart entirely._

 _9)_ _Gender Roles_

 _This didn't even occur to me when I wrote it, but at some point I got a guest reviewer complaining that they didn't like that I'd written traditional gender roles with Kushina cooking and Minato reading a newspaper._

 _My response to you is that gender roles are only a bad thing if you force people to stay inside them. If someone_ wants _to live within their gender role, who are you to interfere? It's their life, after all._

 _Also, it's kinda sorta canon. Minato has stated that his favorite thing in the world is Kushina's cooking. This compounded with the fact that any time we see Kushina and Minato's home life, Kushina is invariably acting as a housewife._

 _Here's a picture for reference:_

 _www . wallpaperup/13319/Sandwiches_family_naruto_shippuden_manga_minato_namikaze_breakfast_uzumaki_kushina_naruto_uzumaki_jinchuuriki_portraits . html_

 _Just use that address (without the spaces) and you'll see why I have that particular headcanon. It's a cute picture of Naruto's family, with Minato reading a newspaper, Naruto escaping out the window with stolen food, and Kushina howling at him from the kitchen to get his ass back inside. XD_

 _10) Kaguya posing as Kushina._

 _This was inspired by a wonderful claymation movie called "Coraline" (SPOILER ALERT) where a young girl is bored with her life, and then in an Alice in Wonderland style she discovers a world just like hers, but_ better _. Her parents were there, exactly how she always wanted them to be, and everything is cool and new and interesting._

 _But slowly, the perfect world falls apart, and the impossible radiance of her new life fades. She finds out that the woman who was her "Other Mother" is actually a witch who steals children's souls by luring them into a world that's too good to be true._

 _I watched this movie years ago, and when the manga with Kaguya and the Infinite Tsukuyomi came out this idea popped into my head and demanded to be written._

 _It boils down to Kaguya wanting to feel like a mother again, and her basically taking Kushina's place in Naruto's life._

 _11) Kurama._

 _He was trapped and silenced in Naruto's mind, and was unable to do or say anything until Naruto remembered his past._

 _12) Why I uploaded the last chapter twice._

 _I got lazy the first time. I wasn't even going to include that last fight scene between Kaguya and Naruto and Sasuke, so I just posted it while hinting at the fight. Then my friend Igornerd read it and flipped out, told me to take the chapter down, and not to even_ think _about posting again until I had a halfway decent fight scene._

 _So if you liked that fight, you have him to thank for it._

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 _That just about sums up everything that needs to be explained for this story. Thank you for reviewing, favoriting, following, or even just reading. I truly appreciate it._

 _Special thanks to Igornerd, Ser Serendipity, EmptySurface, Zenthisoror, and Infamous Storm for helping me make this story better than the crap I spewed onto the keyboard. And a huge thanks to Dorcyy for recommending this story in her "Chance for a Prophecy", and to Santana2 for recommending it in her story "Strays". You guys are all the best._

 _Regards,_

 _Duesal Bladesinger_


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